Sadaf Farooqi on what makes us fat

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Is it true that some people put on weight more easily than others? And if so why? It's a question that's close to many of our hearts. And it's a question that medical researcher, Professor Sadaf Farooqi is trying to answer. In 1997, Sadaf noticed that two children she was studying lacked the hormone leptin. From there, she went on to discover the first single gene defect that causes obesity. For most us, how much we eat is within our control. But for children with this rare inherited condition and, it turned out, several other rare genetic disorders, the evidence is clear. A voracious appetite is not a lifestyle choice: it's a biological response to brains signalling starvation. Sadaf tells Jim how she discovered ten rare genetic disorders that cause severe childhood obesity and what this means for the rest of us. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:03.6	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:06.2	I'm Jumal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important
0:11.0	scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:15.0	What makes us fat?
0:18.0	Well, speaking as a physicist, it's really quite simple.
0:20.0	Calaries in, minus calories out, equals energy that the body stores as fat.
0:26.0	But is it true that some people put on weight more easily than others, and if so, why?
0:31.9	Well, Sir Alf Faruki, Cambridge professor of metabolism and medicine, has devoted
0:36.2	20 years of her life so far to trying to answer that question. In 1997, she discovered
0:42.3	the first single gene defect that causes obesity.
0:46.0	Within a year, children with this genetic defect were being treated.
0:50.0	Their voracious appetites curbed by a daily injection.
0:53.4	Hot on the heels of this discovery, Seraf set up a nationwide study of the genetics of obesity.
0:58.9	Professor Seraf Faruki, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:01.0	Thank you.
1:02.0	Nice to be here. What I find most surprising
1:04.6	about your work is that almost all the genetic disorders you've identified so
1:08.8	far, 10 in total, act on our appetite.
1:14.0	Yes, that's been one of the really interesting things and not something that we particularly expected
1:18.1	because when we started this work in the field, everybody was really thinking that if there were differences between people
1:24.0	those differences would be in our metabolism in how we burn calories and really I think
	...

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